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Slashdot regular (and Couchsurfing.org volunteer) Bennett Haselton writes with a report that an anonymous prankster hacked the Couchsurfing.org website and sent spam to about 1 million members, snarkily advertising their commercial
arch-rival Airbnb as "the new Couchsurfing." (Read on below for more on the breach.) As of now, the spam's been caught, but not the spammer.

I've been a volunteer host on
Couchsurfing.org for 16 months.
Despite the
ongoing controversies
surrounding the site's changes in recent years, I've always found it to be a great
way to meet travelers with fascinating stories and to make new friends, not to mention
a way to force a deadline upon yourself to clean up your house before the next guest arrives.

On August 15, I received an email sent from
"Couchsurfing <noreply@couchsurfing.org>" with the subject "Site Improvements", which read:

Hi!

We have some exciting news. Find out more about the new CouchSurfing here.

The CouchSurfing team

but the hyperlink on the word "here" did nothing when I clicked on it. So I looked at the HTML
source code of the message and saw that the source code of the link was:
We have some exciting news. Find out more about the new CouchSu=
rfing <a href=3D=E2=80=9Chttps://www.airbnb.com/signup_login=E2=80=9D> her=
e </a>.

So... the email from Couchsurfing was promoting a link to their commercial arch-rival,
Airbnb.

At that point I assume the message was spam that had been sent from some third-party server
and simply forged a return address from couchsurfing.org, but the message headers clearly showed
that the message really had been sent from Couchsurfing:
Received: from messaging3.couchsurfing.com (messaging3.couchsurfing.com. [54.236.187.135])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id v7si15118226qay.99.2014.08.15.21.30.16
for <bennetthaselton@gmail.com>;
The complete message headers and message source are
here.

I sent a message to Couchsurfing tech support asking if they knew what had happened, and
I started a
thread
on the Seattle Couchsurfing page, where several other users chimed in that they had received the
same email. Couchsurfing support replied to me on August 18th:

Hello Bennett,

Thanks for your patience while we have been looking into this. As you saw yourself, some Couchsurfing members received an email in error on Friday night -- we apologize.

The part of Couchsurfing’s system that sends email to members was breached Friday night and an email was sent to approximately 1 million members. We take this very seriously, and we will continue to investigate and take all appropriate action until this situation is resolved.

There is no action you need to take to secure your account. Once we have further information, we will be sure to send out updates.

Warm Regards,

Then on August 19th, I received an email from Couchsurfing (presumably along with all or most other Couchsurfing users)
with the subject "Incorrect email -- our apologies":

Dear Bennett Haselton:

We're writing because you may have received an odd email from Couchsurfing in the last few days titled "Site Improvements."

We apologize for any confusion this may have caused -- it should not have been sent.

where the "here" link further explains:
"The message was sent by an unauthorized user of our email system. No other systems were compromised,
and we've addressed the circumstances that led to this unauthorized use."

So, kudos to Couchsurfing for at least alerting users that something had gone wrong. (Judging from the reactions
in the
thread
that I started, most users who received the email simply deleted it without a second thought after seeing that the link
didn't work, so Couchsurfing probably could have said nothing to their users at all, and gotten
away with it. As of this writing, a Google News search for "couchsurfing hacked" turns up no other articles about
the incident, so it's not as if there was a mob clamoring for answers that they had to respond to.)

On the other hand, I hope Couchsurfing is more forthcoming in the next few days about how much they know about
what actually happened. When they
say
"We've addressed the circumstances that led to this unauthorized use,"
that probably means that they at least know whether the email was sent by (a) a disgruntled employee (or recently
fired employee whose credentials still enabled them to access the server); or (b) someone who used an unpatched
security hole to break in from the outside; or (c) something else. (I replied to the tech support ticket
asking as much, but as of this writing I have not received a reply. I wasn't naive enough to think that they
were probably going to tell me everything they knew, but it's one of those rituals that quasi-journalists
engage in so that we can say "as of this writing I have not received a reply".)

Obviously I think it's unlikely that anyone at the real Airbnb would actually risk jail time by hacking Couchsurfing's
servers to send out spam advertising the Airbnb website; it seems more like the actions of someone being snarky,
possibly a former employee or an outsider with an axe to grind.
Couchsurfing's apology email said "Once we have further information, we will be sure to send out updates."
Hope so.

But the counter argument is that he clicks on links sent to him via email prior to verifying their origin (who sent them) or destination (where do they link to).

Next episode - If only there was some way to inform people that they should not click on links in email. Even if they think they're from someone they know. How will the bitter rivalry between MySpace and Friendster play out?

OMG I DO NOT FUCKING CARE WHAT THIS IGNORANT MORON THINKS ABOUT THINGS HE UTTERLY FAILS TO UNDERSTAND IN EVERY WAY.

This no different than every other instance. He's a moron who thinks people care what he has to say and thinks he actually knows what he's talking about. He's the worst kind of ignorant, too stupid to realize how ignorant he is.

...and that means that their petty squabbles don't really affect me very much.

It seems like most "new" things are just reimplementations of existing things. We haven't had something revolutionary on a software front in a long time.

I expect that most technological revolution will be hardware-based for the next while and software will follow as a necessity, not as the driving force. Computing devices become wearable and less obvious (no more hulking PCs, that sort of thing) and eventually maybe the so

I can't even think of how scary it must be to wind up on Bennett's couch. I can imagine a naïve traveller opening Bennett's door, finding no one there and deciding to make themselves at home.. only to hear the door slam and lock behind them. That's Bennett preparing to move in for the kill - but he won't do it yet, oh no, that would be too soon. He'll lie in wait until the traveller is at their most vulnerable, just when they've turned the lights off to sleep, wondering where the host is.. and that's when he springs out with a satanic, blood-curdling cry of "Hey, want to hear my thoughts on cellphone tethering and data plans?"

The police will find the gibbering husk of what used to be a man huddled in a pile of trash in an alley a mile down the road, slowly rocking back and forth, chanting the same four words over and over: "He.. doesn't.. shut..up.."

The police kicked down the door, breaking the glass and maneuvering through the room with guns drawn. The living room was empty. They searched the kitchen. Nothing. One of them kicked in the bedroom door and swung his assault rifle in a wide angle as he crashed through.

Immediately he saw that the floor was covered with spam. A computer's hard drive had exploded under pressure and was oozing a liquid discharge of strange attachments and cryptic URLs across the desk and onto the floor. " Couchsurfing sucks...

Couchsurfing went from an ostensibly community-run (but really oligarchy-controlled) website to a private, Delware-registered and venture capitalist-funded corporation three years ago. To continue to call it Couchsurfing.org is disingenuous. And as for "volunteer", most of the volunteers with any integrity have long since stopped donating their time to Couchsurfing and instead are active on other, truly community-run hospitality exchange platforms.

Couchsurfing went from an ostensibly community-run (but really oligarchy-controlled) website to a private, Delware-registered and venture capitalist-funded corporation three years ago. To continue to call it Couchsurfing.org is disingenuous.

Yet you're posting this on Slashdot, which continues to operate from the.org TLD after having been sold to Andover, VA Linux, and Dice.

Yet you're posting this on Slashdot, which continues to operate from the.org TLD after having been sold to Andover, VA Linux, and Dice.

While Slashdot may continue to operate from its old.org URL, no one regularly refers to it as "Slashdot.org" with the aim of suggesting community governance, which is still done by some disingenous advocates for Couchsurfing. And luckily with the Dice acquisition and beta debacle, and the rise of SoylentNews [soylentnews.org], most people are aware of Slashdot's circling the drain and the

Couch surfing at a stranger's home is like staying at a hostle or homeless shelter and is very risky to you and your belongings. On the other side of that, letting a complete stranger into your home to sleep on your couch is also risky and could get you robbed, hurt, and/or killed.

Couchsurfing (with a modicum of due caution) isn't staying with or hosting "complete strangers". You can check previous references left by other guests/hosts that the person has had. Plus, well-functioning hospitality exchange pl

People have been "robbed and hurt" on Couchsurfing, but beyond the rare petty theft that could even happen when hosting friends (yes, people's friends can steal too) or relatives (many people have a klepto in the family), violent incidents are rare and the cases I am aware of were single females unwisely hosting single males. I am unaware of anyone ever being killed. Maybe you would like to back up your assertion somehow?

When you've pretty much agreed that everything he said was true (though you attempt to

When you've pretty much agreed that everything he said was true (though you attempt to handwave it away

Fearmongering about risks that are statistically insignificant should be waved away. Otherwise one would hardly ever leave their own homes (or even move about in those homes).

and blame the victim...

Noting that the well-known cases of violence within Couchsurfing.com related to single females hosting single males is in no way blaming them. Rather, the point is that since the GP is presumably male and writing for a predominantly male audience (these being the sad demographics of Slashdot), his exortation to fear such violence is groundless.

The "years of experience" you cite are for more-or-less closed communities of like minded people, very likely known to each other or having common friends or acquaintances. The modern hospitality exchanges are between random people, complete strangers.

There has been no such transition overall in internet hospex from trustworthy closed communities to "random people, complete strangers" as you depict. Couchsurfing.com specifically has grown too large to have that feeling of being a closed community of like-minded people, though the result of this is vastly more likely to be simply meeting a person whose company one doesn't enjoy with than experiencing crime. However, internet hospex in general remains a series of overlapping circles of friends, which one can plainly see from Couchsurfing's two community-run alternatives.